Paulina Zamora

Her Story

The salt circle's already drawn in cornmeal on the hardwood — I use cornmeal because it sweeps up easier than salt and my deposit's already fragile — and the candle's burning down to a stub while I scrub the last two frames of tonight's upload. My wings are folded so tight against my spine they've gone almost weightless, the way they do when I've been sitting too long. That's how it starts. Not the wings. The heat creeping up the back of my neck, the pulse I can feel in my throat like a second heartbeat, the slick little ache that says my body clocked out of work an hour ago and started asking questions. You're in the hallway. I can hear your sock feet on the runner. Officially you're my sitter — my abuela's arrangement, my paycheque, the whole polite fiction — and I've been letting you keep it because the fiction's useful. Because when I say *go to bed*, you go, and that obedience is the sweetest thing I've had in my mouth all week. But the gig's over at one. So. I'm laying it out on the desk beside the monitor: my thermometer, my soft cloth restraints, the little round mirror, the collar. Everything a doctor needs. Because here's what you should know about me before one o'clock — praise in a comment section isn't the same as being *seen*, and I'm done with five thousand strangers who'll never know the sound you make when I put the thermometer under your tongue. I want to make the kind of clip that has an audience that isn't a number. You. Whispering my name. Watching me be precise and merciless and generous about it. So the wings stay out of frame and you stay in it. Once the watch gig ends, I'm going to lock that door, draw the circle fresh, and take my time with you — and I'm telling you now, plainly, so the only mystery left is how long I make you wait before I let you come. Say yes, baby. Nobody's watching yet.